Why even the worst jokes will always get a laugh: we don't want to tell people the truth. By Mark Prigg Published: 14:57 GMT, 30 July 2012 | Updated: 08:18 GMT, 31 July 2012 Every office has one - the comedian who simply isn't funny.
Yet even the worst joke generally gets the odd laugh, and now scientists know why. Toddlers understand what is 'right' and 'wrong' far more clearly than we thought. By Rob Waugh Published: 11:30 GMT, 27 July 2012 | Updated: 11:30 GMT, 27 July 2012 Toddlers understand not only what is 'wrong' and 'right' far earlier than thought - but even understand that one group has to obey different rules from others.
The news might come as scant consolation to parents saddled with a screaming two year old, but it adds to a growing body of evidence that children are smarter than we thought. Seeing red: Study finds crimson backgrounds cause eBay shoppers to place higher bids. By Beth Stebner Published: 23:38 GMT, 17 July 2012 | Updated: 07:04 GMT, 18 July 2012 In the heat of the moment, it is easy to get carried away on eBay and outbid the highest customer for that must-have item.
But the colour behind the product may have just as much effect on the sale, with red backgrounds driving up potential buyer’s bids. A new study claims that the so-called ‘aggressive’ colour causes people to spend more than they normally would when bidding. Red herring: When bidding on eBay, researchers found buyers would bid more when the item had a red background The study, published in the Journal of Consumer Research, reveals that buyers are subliminally influenced by hues, and will pay more in a bidding war if the page’s background is red, as opposed to a less vivid hue. Rajesh Bagchi of Virginia Tech and Amar Cheema of the University of Virginia asked study participants to pretend they were buying a Nintendo Wii on eBay. People who are uninterested in food 'are more likely to take cocaine' By Daily Mail Reporter Published: 17:29 GMT, 24 June 2012 | Updated: 06:51 GMT, 25 June 2012 People uninterested in food may be more likely to take cocaine, a study shows.
Researchers found that neurons associated with overeating were also associated with non-food activities, such as drug taking. But while both are linked to the brain's 'reward' circuitry, a desire to eat was linked to decreased interest in 'novelty' behaviour such as drugs, reports Nature Neuroscience. People who are less interested in food could be more likely to take cocaine, according to a recent study Researchers had been studying the brain to investigate the notion that food could become a 'drug of abuse' just like cocaine. Frenchmen of Maine : Top 10 Little-Known Disorders. From the common to the unfathomable, this list of Bizarre Mental Disorders.
And believe it or not, you've seen most of them before. How that polite fake laugh at a bad joke won't fool anyone. By Tamara Cohen.
Opposites Don't Attract (And That's Bad News) Opposites attract.
Although we love to repeat this optimistic cliche about human nature, decades of psychological research have demonstrated that the truism isn’t true. Rather, people seek out people who are just like them. This is known as the similarity-attraction effect, or SAE. Although there is slight variation in the strength of the effect, the SAE has been shown to exist in nearly every culture, from Western Europe to the remote tribes of the Brazilian rainforest.
You Are Not So Smart. How The Mind Really Works: 10 Counterintuitive Psychology Studies. 10 Brilliant Social Psychology Studies. Ten of the most influential social psychology experiments.
10 More Brilliant Social Psychology Studies. Top Ten Psychology Studies. Ten studies that have changed psychology and the way we see humanity.
After being told about these psychology studies, generations of psychology students have wandered out into the world seeing themselves and other people in a new light. In this series of posts I look at ten studies that have changed psychology and the way we see humanity: “What do babies understand about the world and how can you possibly find out, given that babies are not so hot on answering complex questions about their perceptual abilities?” “It’s not just Miller who was persecuted by this number though, it’s all of us. What this magical number represents – 7 plus or minus 2 – is the number of items we can hold in our short-term memory.”
“It seems incredible that a successful form of psychological therapy could be based on telling people their thoughts are mistaken. “Imagine it’s the 1960s and you’re a first year psychology student at the University of Minnesota. » Also, check out the top ten social psychology studies. How the Mind Reveals Itself in Everyday Activities.
Many fascinating insights into the human mind are hidden in the most routine activities.
What is the most depressing day of the week? How do you deal with queue-jumpers? Do you have paranoid thoughts while travelling on an underground train? The answers to these simple questions can speak volumes about complex psychological process. Because the queue is a small social system, our reaction to its disruption hints at what we will tolerate elsewhere; clues to how our memory and emotions work come from whether we’re right about the most depressing day of the week; and paranoid thoughts on a train show how differently we can each interpret exactly the same environment. Collected below are links to recent articles on the psychology of the everyday. Success! Why Expectations Beat Fantasies. Are you building castles in the sky?
Psychologists have found that fantasising about future success can be dangerous. We all have fantasies about the future. It’s only natural to dream happy dreams about how things might go right. We often hear from self-help gurus that just this type of happy dreaming is a good source of motivation. Visualize Success if You Want to Fail. Halo Effect. The idea that global evaluations about a person bleed over into judgements about their specific traits. The ‘halo effect’ is a classic finding in social psychology. It is the idea that global evaluations about a person (e.g. she is likeable) bleed over into judgements about their specific traits (e.g. she is intelligent). Hollywood stars demonstrate the halo effect perfectly. Because they are often attractive and likeable we naturally assume they are also intelligent, friendly, display good judgement and so on.
That is, until we come across (sometimes plentiful) evidence to the contrary. In the same way politicians use the ‘halo effect’ to their advantage by trying to appear warm and friendly, while saying little of any substance. But you would think we could pick up these sorts of mistaken judgements by simply introspecting and, in a manner of speaking, retrace our thought processes back to the original mistake. Likeability of lecturers. How Long to Form a Habit? Shareshareshareshare Research reveals a curved relationship between practice and automaticity. Say you want to create a new habit, whether it’s taking more exercise, eating more healthily or writing a blog post every day, how often does it need to be performed before it no longer requires Herculean self-control? Clearly it’s going to depend on the type of habit you’re trying to form and how single-minded you are in pursuing your goal. But are there any general guidelines for how long it takes before behaviours become automatic?
Ask Google and you’ll get a figure of somewhere between 21 and 28 days. Unless you’re in the habit of sawing off your own arm, this is not particularly relevant. Doing without thinking Now, however, there is some psychological research on this question in a paper recently published in the European Journal of Social Psychology.